Alpha Kimori™ Great Doubt™ Episode One is the first of a trilogy of bright and colorful Japanese Anime inspired story-driven episodic 2D Role Playing Games, which feature an intricate action-adventure epic story with a delightful mix of sci-fi and fantasy elements.

Reviews

“Sherman3D created a brightly futuristic world with a style of its own that stands out from the pack.”
84% – RPGFan

“Alpha Kimori is a great indie RPG that starts out simply enough, but provides surprising depth in its themes and story.”
4/5 – Operation Rainfall

About This Game

Alpha Kimori™ Great Doubt™ Episode One is the first of a trilogy of bright and colorful Japanese Anime inspired story-driven episodic 2D Role Playing Games, which feature an intricate action-adventure epic story with a delightful mix of sci-fi and fantasy elements.

The story of Alpha Kimori™ is set 50 years after the alien invasion of Earth when the newly discovered planet Kimori plays host to two warring human factions – the Bidarians, who want to reclaim Earth, and the Jinrians, who are contented with their new home. Even as the Bidarians destroy with their mighty Robotic Intelligent Cybernetic Armor (RICA) technology, the Jinrians defend the planet with the ability transmute into colossal indigenous creatures. Amidst the turmoil, young Bidarian warrior, Rick, falls in love with Jinrian princess, Yuki.

Falls short in too many areas. Just going to echo the major points, though:

1. Combat is too simplistic. Just spam your high damage ability and grind. Nevermind any kind of "balance" concerns, it never even attempts any kind of depth by giving things like ability/class variety, itemization, consumable management... nothing!2. Writing is too awkward. I can forgive the above point and a weak story/premise if the writing is good (especially since this is an RPG where the focus is on writing). 3. I did complete the game. The "hours played" is a little long because I left the game on for an hour or so while I did other stuff. I don't think the game is too short. If anything it's too long. I say this because this game IMMEDIATELY throws you into grinding. And there's plenty more grinding to be had throughout. On top of that, you revisit the same areas all the time! Basically this is a ~2 hour game stretched into 7 or so. And you can't avoid at least doing some grinding. I was about level 37 on the last boss and he presented the only challenge of the game. If I was... I dunno, level 25 or something I don't think he would be beatable.

More on the writing-The major problems come from two sources: everything is too direct and on the nose (Main character is told to kill, he states that he refuses to kill. Every person has to explain everything like how the government is fascist and fascism is bad. People outright point out their own biases and then say, "But you're not like that" within one second of meeting someone, etc etc) and the dialogue itself is awkwardly phrased. It sounds like it's written by someone with a passion for writing, but their first language isn't English? Like if you were to meet this writer in person you'd be impressed and say, "Wow, your English is great!" but it's not up to snuff when it comes to dialogue in a written story. The phrasing is always SLIGHTLY off. On top of that, it neither attempts to be natural or what I call "movie dialogue" (where each line is meant to both move the plot forward AND demonstrate a [thin] personality within 5 or so words). So- to put it more simply- it's kind of a pain to read.

Cons:the fights are relatively easy without any grinding required.I don't know if it's due to the translation or not,but the dialogue and plot are so terrible I cannot continue to play this game. reading the dialogue is like watching a soap opera it is that level of forced conversation. In fact a soap opera is better.

Update! I got developer comments. That's awesome. That makes the dev's credibility go up a notch in my eyes just for that. And, given that I think I'll add some more detail to this review so they, and others, can understand exactly what I'm talking about.

Warning! Small spoilers along with *a lot* of text below

The issues I have with the story are more to do with the character interactions. I played right up until the two main characters have spied on the lady in the cloak and it's time for graduation. I've got three specific examples I can show right at this point in the game:

1. you are ordered by one of the elder's to follow the woman in the cloak. Why does this person order you, someone that's not even graduated to follow someone? I could see the motivation for choosing the MC as being an internal political struggle since maybe the MC and his family has leanings towards the other elder you are supposed to deliver the package too, a test of loyalty for the character to see if he is willing to follow orders since he doesn't like to kill and may be conspiring with the enemy, or some other thing. However, whatever the motivation is for having the MC follow the woman in the cloak we aren't shown any of it. All we have is a blatant plot hook that the player is smacked in the face with. The Elder even says something to the effect of "she trusts you" but we don't know that. The Elder certainly shouldn't know that. It makes the Elder come across as either knowing way more and being scary intelligent, which it didn't for me, or just some dumb guy that has powers of the script.

Aside from the fact that having a non-graduate tail someone who could be an enemy spy instead of trained government agents the presentation to make the MC as a choice could've been better: Something like "that areas mostly for trainees, you being there makes perfect sense so go ahead and catch up and see what you can learn" It's not great but it's better than "Plot character appears and forces you on a quest"

2. On the day of graduation the character "confronts" his parents with his lack of desire to graduate and be a soldier. This has several flaws:

A. The MC seems entirely unaware of the situation he's in and how his opinion will be construed. Either the MC doesn't understand his situation and therefore is stupid or he does understand the situation and doesn't care if his parents reject or report him and is willing to accept death. Now if he's aware and is willing to accept death he's either brave or depressed at his existence maybe verging on suicidal. However, we don't see any of those traits in the MC prior to this. We see only a sort of vague resistance to his situation. He'll avoid killing the beasts if he can, but if the player chooses to charge headlong into every fight killing every animal drenching the characters in the blood of the fallen that's all good. So the MC is neither directly opposed nor directly for. he's only sort of "meh"

B. His parents reaction is so over the top it is unbelievable. The line "I'll kill you myself" is probably what pushed it over the edge for me. That single line says so much about the characters relationship with his parents as well as theirs with him and yet the response to it is "oh well I guess I should go to graduation then".

C. There's no variation in the text. It seems like a small point and yet throughout this whole very intense conversation the text is the same. I don't know if there is inflections or raised voices or anything. It reads monotone.

I have no problem with the plot being straightforward. Straightforward is fine. I don't need a bunch of choice trees like mass effect to enjoy a game. But I do need to be able to believe the characters. With this game I felt like I was watching a presentation not playing a game.

Hopefully this makes my point of view a little more clear and also doesn't come across as emotional. I have tried to present my examples objectively without rambling. Feel free to comment and let me know if this comes across as too personal instead of professional.

a) The game is very poorly written. 90% of all text can be separated into either clumsy exposition or awkward character interaction. As well, the main character's primary conflict, that he refuses to kill the creatures on the planet, goes against the gameplay completely. Often, the topic is discussed immediately after a segment of nothing but killing creatures.

and

b) The battle system is boring. I played two hours of the game (of the about six that most people say the game takes to finish) and the battle system doesn't evolve past "heal when needed" and "dump specials on bosses". Most of the fights I got through by hammering the Enter key.

I don't recommend this game at all. It's all right visually, but doesn't have anything decent to put inside that nice wrapper.

EDIT======="Thank you for your feedback, AtomicPineapple. Please note that during battles, none of the Ki Creatures are killed. They are defeated and chased away. The focus of the game is more to its anime inspired story. We understand that this is not everyone's cup of tea." - the developer

That's the thing, though, this IS my cup of tea, generally speaking. My top recommended tag is "Anime" for a reason. The plot isn't even the problem, it's when the character's start talking that everything falls apart. There's also a laundry list of technical issues that I didn't get into in the first draft. For one, I can't get the game to fullscreen for some reason without it crashing. As well, the control scheme is completely off and there doesn't seem to be any way to change it (as far as I can tell, the only movement is with the arrow keys and the only way to input a command is with the Enter button, meaning I have to constantly move my hand off of the movement controls while my left hand does nothing, except occasionally hit Esc which is somehow the Cancel command) Not only is the control scheme off, but nowhere does it tell you what any of the buttons do, so it's also confusing.

Making a story focused game is fine, but it doesn't mean you can just phone in the "game" part of the game, which is what the player is going to be spending most of their time on. Even if the story was mind blowing, I don't want to sit through hours of boring combat to get at it.

An interesting game that takes the format of the classical JRPG which was popular with SNES and GENESIS.The artwork was very nice and interesting and it gave a good atmospheric feel to it. The music was repetitive but still very nice. The combination of the artwork, music, and gameplay envokes nostalgia for sure. I enjoyed playing this game so far and I plan on finishing it soon. I would like to see more JRPGs like this.Great Job Sherman3D.